September 15, 2011

Rifling

I've seen a lot of debate about rifled barrels, so here's my input:First off, Definition: Rifling is the process of making helical grooves in the barrel of a gun or firearm, which imparts a spin to a projectile around its long axis. This spin serves to stabilize the projectile, improving its stability and accuracy.

Based on this, rifling would result in more accuracy and less fish-tailing darts. The issue is that its difficult to make, and even more difficult to make with enough turns to make it work well.

All of my attempts at rifled barrels for Nerf have failed, so I got thinking and I remembered that shotgun slug rounds have rifled bullets instead of rifled barrels. So I made some rifled darts by burning a spiral into my dart with my glue gun.

Center dart is stock,

These all seemed to fly straighter for me, but they lost a little bit of distance. My next set will use thin strips of electrical tape to make the darts spin. This should increase range and accuracy compared to stock.

Note that this could cause issues in some guns, I reccomend you make ONE then test it. Not all guns react the same to darts. This should work best in single shot guns.